Personal

I swear, if I ever completely lose it, flip out, and go postal, I’m going to end up doing it with a staple gun, because of the sheer number of jobs I’ve run for lawyers, accountants, government employees, and various other people who seem to compensate for whatever percieved deficiencies may exist in their life with a pathological drive to staple everything as many times as possible, whether or not it’s actually necessary.

Grrrrrrrr.

And ack pffft, too.

…just posting a quick note in the few minutes I have before I’m off work today.

I’m still around — this has been an extremely busy week, and I wasn’t able to find time to update the site. Funny thing about running the copyroom at a financial firm — October 15^th is the deadline for the six-month extention from April 15^th. Made things pretty crazy around here — but on the upside, I got a hefty paycheck! Working a 50.25 hour week will do that, I guess.

Other interesting events: got my PFD, and spent some of it on a TV and DVD player, so I can now watch movies again. Picked up a couple DVD’s, but not too many — while I fully intend to keep working on my collection, I won’t be adding to it at quite the rate I was for a while. Renting will become the byword for a while, more than buying.

That’s the basics — I’ll try and babble a bit more in-depth sometime soon.

First off, a quick recap since the last time I posted. Not too long after I got home from Aurafice, where I made my last post, I got a call from Nate inviting me out that evening. So, after killing time around the house for the rest of the afternoon, I got ready to head out, and met up with Nate at the Vogue. We hung out there with Graves (one of the regulars at both the Vogue and the Mercury that Nate and I have met) and Francesca (a quite nice — and quite attractive — Japanese/French girl that we met through Graves). The four of us talked and danced until around 11:30 or so, when Francesca left, and Nate, Graves and I headed over to the Mercury. A good hour or so there, and then I decided it was time for me to head home and crash. Nate had a party to head off to, so he walked me back to my apartment (such a nice boy…) then headed off, and I crashed out.

Sunday I spent entirely at home, either reading or mixing. Ever since I’ve come down here, when I’ve been mixing I’ve had a fairly annoying background hum, and wasn’t able to figure out where it was coming from or how to get rid of it. Sunday I went over my setup and finally figured out how to take the hum out, and spent much of the day re-recording some of the mixes I’ve made since I’ve been down here, since the original versions all had that background noise. Two of the mixes — Difficult Listening Hour 4 and Where Time Becomes A Loop — ended up slightly different than the first time I recorded them, but that’s normal.

Now, for the changes I’d hinted about a couple days ago. First off, the more minor of the two is that after considering it for a few days, I finally figured I’d give it a shot this morning, and for the first time in about 8 years or so, I’m clean shaven. I’m not at all sure how long this is going to last — I’ve already been told that I look about 18 — but I’d gotten curious enough to try.

The more major of the two — I’m working on quitting smoking. I started last week, and made it through the majority of the week with just a couple cigarettes. I did kind of lose the battle this weekend (it’s quite easy to slip up when out at a bar with friends), but now it’s a new week, and I’m giving it another shot. I haven’t quit smoking — as evidenced by this weekend — and I don’t like saying that I’m trying to quit smoking, as the word trying carries an implicit implication of failure — but I am working on quitting. It’s at least worth a shot. Wish me luck!

Here we are, back to Monday morning again. Woohoo…or something like that. Hrm.

The weekend was okay. Friday night I met up with Alex and Nate again, as this was Alex’s last weekend here in the Seattle area before he gets out of the Navy and heads back to Alaska to go to UAA. We hit the Vogue and the Mercury, then Nate went home, and Alex and I crashed out at the Shoebox.

Most of Saturday was just Alex and I bumming around Capitol Hill — neither of us really had any plans, so it was pretty laid back. Towards the evening we met up with Casey at the Bauhaus coffeeshop/bookstore and sat and talked for a while. Casey and Alex went off to meet up with Dez down at the Alibi room, but I was feeling pretty beat, so I just wandered home and went to bed.

Sunday I spent mostly in bed — apparently I’ve picked up a minor bug of some sort. Not enough to make me feel really bad, but I certainly don’t feel really good, either. Had another conversation with Loren in the evening, and eventually crashed out again.

Not all that amazingly entertaining of a weekend, I guess…I’d been planning on getting out and doing a bit more, but just ended up not quite feeling up to it. I’m still feeling a little under the weather now, but am hoping it blows over fairly soon. On the bright side, I did get word from Loren that my bribe…er…tax refund showed up at the Pit, and he’ll be mailing it down to me, so I should have that sometime this week. Pretty cool, I guess. Anyway, that’s enough freeform babble for now….

There’s a distinct possibility that I just might be able to get out of debt within the next month. A somewhat staggering prospect, really — I’ve had a credit report that’s ranged from shaky to just plain bad for so long that I’d more or less written it off, figuring that I’d get it all paid off “eventually.” Well, eventualities do come around occasionally, I guess.

I saw an ad somewhere on the ‘net for ConsumerInfo.com offering a free credit report, so I figured what the heck, and signed up. It turns out that you do have to sign up for a pay service to get the report, but you can cancel out of that before you ever get charged if you don’t want to continue with the service.

I got my credit report today, and whaddaya know — I’m only in debt $2984. A big number, admittedly, but not nearly as bad as it could be. So, now I just need to figure out the best way to get that taken care of — I’d really like to get to a point where I don’t have any more outstanding debts hanging over my head. Tonight after work I’m going to wander by Washington Mutual, the bank I’m using down here, to see if they can do a debt consolidation loan (and if they can, whether they’ll give me one), and if not, if they can recommend me to a company that might. I figure if I can get the debt consolidation loan, then I should be able to afford payments on that — and the PFD and other money owed me will help me get the loan paid off as soon as they come through.

In theory, I could be down to a single payment pretty soon — and if I can afford to devote all of the PFD to that loan and pay the rest off as fast as possible, I could be completely debt-free by early 2002. Not bad — not bad at all. Time to cross my fingers again, I think.

Yeah, well, yesterday kinda blew. A lot. Not quite a “terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad, going to move to Australia” day…but not exactly sunshine-n-roses, either.

Monday evening I’d gotten a call from Nate to meet him over for coffee at a place about 2 blocks down Boylston from my apartment. All fine and dandy, was a nice evening, talking and playing chess — but the coffee was a bad idea. Having dramatically cut the amount of caffiene I take in from what I used to, my system isn’t conditioned to accept a sudden influx of stimulants at 6:30pm in the evening. I didn’t get to sleep until sometime around 1am…ugh. Not doing that again anytime soon…the coffee part, at least. The talk and the chess was fine.

Also that evening, after Nate and I parted ways, I’d decided to pick up batteries for my MiniDisc recorder so that I could work on recording another mix session. On the way down the hill to QFC, however, I saw Holly and Ryan getting out of Ryan’s car. Turns out they were meeting up with a friend at the Rosebud (a cafe/bar on Pike), and invited me along. Once there they introduced me to Trey, and not long afterwards Will, a friend of Trey’s, showed up, and the five of us kicked back and had a lot of fun talking and joking around for a while. I was hoping the two cosmopolitan martinis I had would offset the coffee, as alcohol tends to make me drowsy…unfortunately, no go. It did make for quite an entertaining evening, however, and after a while I headed home and eventually fell asleep.

Unfortunately, falling asleep at one in the morning doesn’t exactly help ensure a quick up-n-at-’em in the morning. I didn’t miss my bus, but I sure didn’t hop out of bed as quickly as I do when I crash out at 10pm. Anyway, once I got to work, things were pretty crazy from the start, which didn’t do a whole lot to help my mood. I’m just glad I don’t get hangovers — two martinis probably wouldn’t be enough to trigger one anyway, but you never know, right? Lunchtime rolls around and I head down to Todays to pick up my paycheck — only to find out that it’s not there yet.

This is one of my few big beefs about my current work/pay situation — Xerox has required that rather than using their own system, Todays has to use a third-party intermediate called White Amber to handle my pay. So, each week I need to go to White Amber’s website and input my hours. At that point, an e-mail gets sent to my supervisor within Xerox, who has to approve my hours. Once my hours are approved, then Todays can cut me my check. End result — too many cooks in the kitchen, and it is causing me all sorts of headaches. It already delayed my ‘official’ payday from each Friday to the following Monday, and then there are occasional things like this, when it’s not there Monday, not there Tuesday, and I have to call today to see if I’m going to get paid or not. Urgh…things like this make it really difficult to plan out a budget and keep my money on track.

Then, just to make the day even more entertaining, once I get home and check my mail, I find a bill from GCI for roughly $400. Now I’m really ticked — before I left state, I made sure to completely pay up my accounts with GCI, and made arrangements for my phone and cable modem service to be cut off at the end of June. Last month when I’d called up and talked to Miranda and Loren (as along with Shane, they are the current residents of The Pit), I’d found out that for some reason GCI had not disconnected my service — but they assured me that bills were being paid, and it wouldn’t end up causing me any problems. Grrrr…that bill sure seemed to be telling me a different story. As it turns out, though, that much at least may work out — I’ve talked to both Loren and GCI, and it’s all getting taken care of. I was lucky enough to get a GCI person that I knew (a guy named Clyde, who I’ve known around Anchorage for a few years, and was starting at GCI just as I was leaving), so he’s going to see what he can do to get the bill knocked off — when he checked my account the notation to have my service cut at the end of June is in there, it just never happened…so at least at one level, it’s definitely a GCI screwup. I should be getting a call on that sometime today.

I did get a chance to jabber with Loren for a while yesterday evening, which was cool. After sorting out some of the confusion with the GCI stuff (some of which turns out to be related to my cable modem — I thought I owned it, so told Loren he could hold onto it, GCI thought they owned it, so were adding bills to my account to make up for a ‘lost’ cable modem), we got each other caught up on all the general day-to-day bits. Sounds like I’m missing out on a lot of drama up there…can’t say I’m surprised, nor disappointed that I’m not involved anymore, to be completely honest. While there are some disadvantages to my current living situation, one of the definite advantages is a nearly totally drama-free lifestyle.

And that’s about it for the moment. I did manage to put together another mix session last night, which came out pretty nicely…I’m really hoping I can get a way to get the ones I’ve done onto MiniDisc (I’ve now got three or four that are MD-only currently) onto my computer, ripped to .mp3, and/or burned to CD sometime soon — at the very least, would be nice to finally put an update on my DJ Wudi propaganda page. I’ll get to it as soon as I can, though. Laters….

Hrm…I guess waiting a week between entries isn’t exactly the recommended technique for keeping a journal, is it? Of course, in my defense, I have been making the occasional post directly to my webpage from work. Now, one could, at this point, rather easily point out that that may not be the recommended technique for keeping a job…but that would just be cruel, and besides, I do it during breaks or lunch. So there. Bleah. :)

On a personal level, there just isn’t a whole lot of stuff going on in day-to-day life at the moment. My alarm goes off at 6am, I’m usually out of bed by 6:30, showered, dressed, and out the door by 7:25, and at work by 8am. I slog through work until 5pm, grab a bus home, then kill time reading or catching a movie (when I’m feeling rich enough to afford it), and am usually in bed by 10pm.

Rather amazingly dull, all laid out like that. Doesn’t seem all tht long ago that I was getting up between noon and 2pm, going to bed at six in the morning, and spending as much time as possible out with friends or at clubs, either DJ’ing or just having fun.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Okay, so that last line was a bit of an overstatement. A big overstatement. But still…does growing up — or at least getting older — really necessitate slipping into a routine so _un_inspiring that it actually inspires me to whine about it here?

I certainly hope not. Realistically, I can reassure myself that my current somewhat boring (and, therefore, bored) existance is a side effect of the move. I’m in a new town where I’m no longer the known personality that I was in Anchorage. I haven’t met very many people yet, and those I have I don’t run into that often, as Seattle is big enough that it doesn’t have an analogue to Vinyl (Village Inn, Northern Lights), that notorious center of the Anchorage social scene. I’m also in a much different financial situation — I’ve cut my pay by $1.50/hr from TimeFrame (and by $2.65/hr from my short stint at GCI), while nearly doubling my rent for an apartment roughly the size of my bedroom in Anchorage, and adding phone and electric bills that are no longer split with roommates to my monthly expenses. I no longer have a car, so my “sphere of influence” is limited to where I can go in a reasonable amount of time either by foot or by city bus.

Suffice to say, if anyone thought I was leaving Anchorage to make things easier on myself, they were sorely mistaken.

But, of course, that wasn’t why I left, as anyone who actually knows me decently well enough knows. I left for quite a few reasons — many of which I’ve ranted about on my webpage from time to time in the past — but primary among them was just the need to get out on my own in a new atmosphere.

Well, I’m out, I’m on my own, and this definitely isn’t Anchorage. I’ve known for a while that I probably wouldn’t really be in a decent spot financially until sometime in mid-October (with my last PFD estimated at $1800, parents owing me $1400 when they can get it to me, my bribe…er…tax refund of $300 showing up at some point, and another outstanding debt of roughly $1300 that I’m hoping will show up after PFD’s hit, I stand to be about $4800 better off if they all come through), it’s this nebulous paycheck-to-paycheck scraping by that gets pretty harrowing. Heck, if it weren’t for a landlord giving me castaways and a neighbor who abandoned his belongings when he bailed state, I still wouldn’t have any furniture!

Ah, well, I’ll make it — I just had to whine for a few moments. Things certainly aren’t all bad down here — my job is good, if not the most exciting in the world, I’m a bit strapped financially, though certainly not broke, my social life will pick up eventually, as there are things to do when I can afford it, and all in all, I’m really enojoying things as a whole. It’s just the niggling little details that can add up and look worse than they really are.

Of course, even when I claim that life is boring and I have nothing to do or say about it, I can still fill up eight-plus pages in this little notebook about my lack of anything to write about. ;) Like that will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.

Oh, well. It’s a bit after 10pm, and much as it may grate on my nocturnal inclinations, these days that does mean that it’s bedtime for Bonzo. Until tomorrow, then (or whenever I get back to scribble in here again)….